Shock and Panic

Critics allege that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) causes brain damage in unwitting victims. But there is no scientific evidence that ECT leads to lasting impairment, while permanent cognitive and memory disturbances are far more likely to result from use of widely prescribed antipsychotic drugs and antidepressants.

CARDIFF – No medical therapy is treated more differently by countries, regions, hospitals, and doctors than electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). This is surprising in an era when treatments that work should supposedly be used with some uniformity. In fact, despite a consensus that ECT is the most effective treatment for severe depressive disorder, it comes at the bottom of the list in most treatment regimens for mood disorders.

Some of the unease about ECT stems from psychiatry’s dark past, when patients in many countries had fewer legal rights than prisoners. Not so long ago, physical treatments such as lobotomy and ECT could be inflicted on patients without their consent, and sometimes for punitive purposes.

But there is no comparable protest against the use of antipsychotic drugs, which have similarly been forced on people – and even used to torture prisoners. And, whereas few people now get ECT involuntarily, and in all cases consent is sought, a large and growing number get antipsychotic drugs under false pretences, including children, vulnerable adults, patients with Alzheimer’s, and a host of others whose lives are shortened by treatment, with no effort undertaken to seek their consent.

David Healy is Professor of Psychiatry in Cardiff University; he has been involved as an expert witness in homicide and suicide trials involving SSRI drugs, and in bringing these problems to the attention of American and British regulators.

The author of this article is clearly unaware of the hundreds of publications and research papers done on ECT that show the contrary to everything that he claims in this article.
I wonder how psychiatry would explain bipolar patients that have had multiple depression periods, and retained perfect memory skills, often photographic memory, not alone photographic detail memory, that suddenly loose years of their lives, and end up with a memory worse than a goldfish after one single ECT treatment ?
Or suddenly starting to get headaches every single day for the rest of their lives after been treated with ECT.

Four small facts that simply show that ECT has never helped anyone, but that it is the muscle relaxing drugs given during ECT treatment are helping the patient.

1.In Italy, Rome 1938 a psychiatrist notices that pigs given electric shock through their heads are docile and easy to slaughter. he starts using the procedure on his patients to calm them down. It wasn't until they started putting the patients to sleep and giving them relaxing drugs so they wouldn't hurt them selves during the grand mall seizures ECT gives, that they noticed that it had an effect on reducing depressions.

2. Skottland 1970 An ECT machine at a psychiatric ward had a fault. All dials and meters where working, but the machine was not giving out any electric current. The ECT machine was used in this damaged state for an entire year before the fault was discovered. The psychiatrists and staff where non the wiser because after waking from the procedure the patients where feeling better and their depressions diminished or gone.

3. Paris 1993 A deeply depressed man is planned for getting ECT, but since he also has a severe fracture he has to get this treated first. He is drugged for surgery and his leg operated on. When he wakes up after the operation and is to be taken back to the psychiatric ward they find that his depression is gone, and that he is feeling better.

4. Lund in Sweden 2015. Research on ECT is showing that patients that are getting Sham ECT in stead of the real thing are getting well at the same rate or faster than the patients that are given ECT. A sham ECT is when the patient goes through the procedure, but is not getting the grand mall seizure because no electricity is being administered.

The authors professor degree is clearly not worth the paper it is written on if he isn't aware of the sham ECT research that has been done which shows absolutely none, or at best marginal difference between a Real ECT and a sham ECT, Or the Hundreds of research papers on ECT showing blood clots in the brain after ECT, Cell death, or the simple fact that most every depressed patient treated with ECT have managed to function even when they where at the height of their depression, while after ECT many can't even manage to operate a toaster, let alone recognize their family and friends or even remember their lives before ECT.

Simple logic and common sense seems to be completely absent in David Healy's head. He is probably just as indoctrinated with false lies as the doctor trying to convince my spouse that the shaking hands and tremors from being on Lithium would go away after one week at most. She had been on an absolute minimum dosage for three months, and was standing in the middle of a ward with about twenty patients that had been on Lithium longer than her. All where shaking as if they had parkinsons. Still the Doctor was dumb enough to try and convince us that the shaking hands and tremors would go away within a week.

I am a trained professional in electrical theory and have also been trained in safety procedures in dealing dangerous electrical currents. I also signed as a witness on a consent form so my wife could receive ECT. I signed because I was not informed of the amount of current used. I now have my wife's hospital records and I am livid because the currents recorded far exceed safe amounts of electricity. All medical knowledge in accidental electrical shock will discredit all proponents of ECT if the amounts of current are revealed. Talk to any professional who works with electricity if 600 mA to 800 mA will kill living cell tissue. They will all tell you that as little as 30 mA can cause enough damage to cause tissue damage and even fibrillation which can lead to cardiac arrest. And the 6 to 8 seconds this amount of damaging current is applied to the brain in ECT will produce a large amount of damage in addition to the damage of the resulting seizures.

It is unethical to conduct research on ECT, let alone actually practice it. The vast amount of medical research into accidental electrical shock and medical conditions such as epilepsy are more than enough to demonstrate that the idea of ECT should have never been investigated in the first place.

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